


Bar Fight

by wneleh



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Logical Fallacies, college days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 09:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rhett is insufferable and Link just wants to get his homework done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bar Fight

“So I have a new favorite logical fallacy.”

It was a very Rhett statement, designed to pique Link’s curiosity, and Link wondered how long he’d be able to keep from commenting. It was a game Link played whenever he was stuck in a car with Rhett – in other words, kind of constantly, because somehow Rhett always had to get somewhere and the only way it was going to happen was if Link drove. 

He was going to stay quiet… he was going to stay quiet…

“The Texas Sharp-shooter,” Rhett said, with maybe a little too much enthusiasm to be completely natural. 

And now the game was lost, dang it. Because as far as Link knew, logic was about, “If A then B does not mean if B then A,” and he figured a fallacy was when you didn’t put the “not” where it was supposed to be. So where did guns and Texas come in? Link knew he wasn’t going to make it even to the next mile marker without asking.

Fortunately, though, Rhett just kept on talking.

“A Texas Sharp-Shooter’s a dude who shoots buckshot at his barn, then circles a bunch of holes near each other and says that’s where he was aiming.”

That didn’t sound like logic, good or bad, to Link. That sounded like a good way to mess up your barn. “You were clearly raised by lawyers, not farmers,” he said.

Rhett ignored him. “I mean, it would be great if it had a cool, Latin name, like cum hoc ergo poptart hoc, Or post hoc ergo poptart hoc, or…”

“Did you say ‘poptart’???”

And now of course Rhett was laughing and knocking on the dashboard. “Point for me,” he said.

“Do you even know what those words mean? Ergo means ‘therefore’… say it again, the first Latin one.”

“Cum hoc ergo poptart hoc.”

“Hoc’s a part of a pig. Cum is with. ‘If we have a pig hoc we can make poptarts’?” If Rhett could play smart, he could play dumb.

“It works out to, causation doesn’t equal correlation.”

“Then why didn’t you say it that way?”

Rhett didn’t respond, which meant one of three things. A, he was working on a really good comeback. B, he was thinking about his girlfriend. Or, C, he was thinking about food.

“Turn left, turn left, the Pearl Glenn Roadhouse will be on the right.”

Food it was.

Link didn’t know whether Rhett was navigating by memory, or recommendation, or smell, or whether he’d seen a sign back aways, but five minutes later Link was easing his ancient Malibu between a couple of even more ancient Dodge pickups. 

There were more people inside than Link would have expected from the number of vehicles in the lot. Was there a Latin way of saying, you could never tell how crowded a place would be by the number of parked cars? Populus automobilus disconnectus?

Rhett, now 21 and fully legal, sauntered (Link suspected he’d been practicing his saunter as part of his prep for being a Christian Southern Rock Star But A Cool One Into Love And Redemption Not Some Saccharine Phony. Also We Might Sometimes Mention Farts) to the bar and bought a Bud, clearly ready to produce an ID which just as clearly wasn’t going to be asked for.

Link slipped into a booth and opened his controls textbook; Rhett might be willing to spend spring break blissfully unoccupied by things academic, but Link had a near-perfect GPA to maintain. Intellectually he knew that he could pretty much fail everything and keep his cumulative above the cutoff for his various scholarships, but his brain never seemed to be able to tell the rest of his nervous system anything useful.

Rhett waved his hand a little – did Link want a drink, seeing as the bartender wasn’t carding? – and Link shook his head no, lifting the book a little so that Rhett could see he’d brought it in with him. Rhett made a face and turned to the guy next to him, a man the size of the cousins on his dad’s side and three times as hairy. 

“Do you know anything about logical fallacies?” Link heard Rhett ask. 

\- - - - -

Though it was a little dry at first, the reading got pretty interesting, and Link paused only order a Coke and some fries. Dinner of champions. 

The place was getting downright crowded, and it was getting harder to keep track of Rhett’s voice, now pontificating about darts (Rhett knew way, way too much about feathers, or, rather, flights). 

This could get interesting, because, for all Rhett’s family teased Link about never giving him a weapon – and Link had to admit, they had a point – it wasn’t like Rhett had ever actually, to Link’s knowledge, thrown many darts. Basketballs, yes. Golf clubs, check. Darts? Not so many.

Link closed the book around a finger and turned a little in the booth to get a clear view of the alcove where the dartboard, along with a few pool tables, lived. Rhett had made friends, a woman about ten years older than them, couple of guys maybe her age, maybe younger, who looked enough alike to be related, and a couple of slightly younger girls who may or may not have been with the guys. 

After inspecting the various options carefully, and holding up a finger to check for drafts, Rhett let a dart fly, actually hitting close to the center of target. He smiled at the girls and then looked back towards Link; Link tipped an imaginary hat and Rhett turned back to his game. His second dart went wide left, as did the third. “Texas Sharpshooter!” he exclaimed, then went forward and unhooked the board from its nail. “I was actually aiming here,” he said, moving the board left. “The board was hanging in the wrong spot.”

The circle around Rhett reacted variously; the woman laughed, the two girls backed toward the nearest pool table, the shorter of the two guys examined the nail as if it would explain what the tall freak was talking about, and the taller guy stepped closer to Rhett, who’d now backed up a little. “That’s not how we play darts in these parts,” one said.

“That’s my point,” said Rhett. “The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is, you – well, not you YOU personally, I’m sure your logic is flawless, completely flawless, all day every day – but the fallacy is, you change the game after you see how it’s going. It’s human nature, to over-extrapolate. To see patterns where there ain’t none. Get what I’m saying?”

“He’s calling you a phallic symbol,” called one of the girls by the pool table. “A dick.” Proving Rhett wasn’t the only person in the room who could abuse Latin.

Link replaced his finger with a paper napkin and closed this textbook, then put a $10 under his Coke. “Rhett, let’s get going,” 

“I don’t think they have the same root at all,” said Rhett, “and, anyway, that’s what’s called the ‘Etymological fallacy’.”

“Now he’s calling you a bug dick,” said the shorter guy. Smart Ass Guy.

Link grabbed his book and got up. “Come on, Rhett, let’s…”

That’s when Bug Dick took a swing at Rhett; and for all that Rhett was a dork and a blowhard when the mood struck him, he’d also been a pretty serious athlete until pretty recently, so he absorbed that hit and the one after but then used his atrociously long reach to deliver a two-handed jab-shove of his own that sent Bug Dick reeling straight into Link’s path.

Link pushed out with the textbook as hard as he could – didn’t mean to, meant to even catch him maybe – and the guy careened into an unpopulated extension of the bar’s counter. He rebounded and came back swinging; Link blocked with the book, but somehow knuckles first, twisting his right hand and wrist and arm in a way that HURT. Then someone must have hit him from behind because he was falling and tangling with a bar stool and landing hard on his left side, the book digging into his ribs. 

Leaving Rhett undefended!

He leveraged to his feet as fast as he could, but way too slowly, because his arms just weren’t working right; by the time he’d made it all the way up, two guys Link didn’t remember were holding Rhett by the biceps, but Rhett otherwise seemed okay somehow. Bug Dick was sitting on the floor not four feet from where Link hand landed, bleeding from his face somewhere. Nose, maybe? Oh, and there was Smart Ass Guy, coming to his feet near Rhett. Link must have missed something. 

For a terrifying instant Link thought that Smart Ass Guy was going to get in a sucker punch while Rhett was being held, but then a couple other guys, plus the woman who’d been there at the start, were in Smart Ass Guy’s face, and he turned and looked toward Bug Dick. “Hey, someone get him a napkin,” he said.

So this was what being in a bar fight was like; check that off his bucket list.

Everything, everyone seemed frozen in place for a long moment, and then the bar door slammed open. Cops. Really, really fast, efficient cops, three total, who quickly checked out Bug Dick and got him cleaned up, while getting the basic story, more or less correctly, from the locals. Someone even described it as a misunderstanding related to classical roots.

When they got to Link, and he gave his full name – Charles Lincoln Neal – it turned out that one of the cops knew his dad, and then another knew his ex-step-dad, and then he was being quizzed on ten years of family and ex-family news while his teeth were rattling and his right forearm was REALLY starting to throb and he just wanted to leave or at least sit down and God they had three hours of driving ahead of them and he just wanted to crawl into a hole or scream or cry or all three at once or…

And then they were outside, shivering in the cool March mountain air, Link’s controls book, now slightly dented in one corner, clutched in his left hand; his right, the one he wrote with, damn it, was pretty much useless. 

Rhett reached into Link’s jacket pocket and pulled out his keys. 

Link thought he should ask Rhett how much he’d had to drink; and then he thought, no.

“I only had a beer and a half,” Rhett answered anyway. “Get in the damn car. I want to put some distance between us and the Broward boys.”

So the guys had names; Link had completely missed this.

They drove in silence; but soon Rhett was turning off into the parking lot of a small motel. He jumped out without pausing to see if Link would follow; two minutes later, he banged on Link’s window, showing a brass key tied to a plastic cut-out of a duck. Link had used classier keys for budget gas station restrooms.

Link opened the Malibu’s door carefully, trying not to show the shakes that just wouldn’t stop. By the time he was completely out of the car Rhett was standing in the doorway of a nearby motel room, arms crossed, back-lit.

“Don’t be an ass, you’ll let cold air in,” said Link, but he needn’t have worried; for all the motel was probably dirt cheap, the wall unit was blasting plenty of warm air.

For a moment Link wondered how much the rooms actually were, and whether he could afford to get one of his own. But, no, that was stupid, and for all he didn’t want to deal with Rhett right now he also wanted to eat this week.

“I’ll get our bags,” said Rhett. “You figure out how to call ahead, tell the guys we won’t be there until tomorrow.”

But Link didn’t – couldn’t move. 

A minute later Rhett was pushing past him with their duffles. “Did you call?”

“No.”

“Never mind, I’ll go use a pay phone. Probably cheaper. You check for bugs.”

If there were insects in the room, Link didn’t want to know about it.

And now Rhett was back. “You haven’t moved, have you.”

“S’pose not.”

Rhett was now examining light fixtures, the smoke detector, an old nail hole. THOSE sort of bugs! 

“I had them give us a different room than they first suggested,” said Rhett. “Figured they couldn’t have every room monitored.”

Rhett’s ridiculousness-verging-on-paranoia was kind of cute sometimes. Not tonight. But it was enough to get Link’s legs moving again, it seemed. “What, maybe I wanted to give them a show,” he said, sitting hard next to his duffel. He’d just get out his kit with his toothbrush and such, and a fresh t-shirt and PJ bottoms - but, no, his right hand didn’t want to cooperate so he switched but then the zipper wouldn’t pull…

“What is WRONG with you?” Rhett snapped, and Link looked at him, incredulous, wanting to read his face but his eyes were getting blurry and THIS WAS NOT HAPPENING!

“Are you hurt?” Rhett asked. “When could you have gotten hurt?”

That got Link angry enough to use his right hand on the zipper; it hurt like hell, but the zipper yielded. 

Link pulled his right hand back to safety against his body, then reached in with his left to get his stuff.

But now Rhett was in the way, sitting very close, his hand between Link’s and the open duffel. “Let me see,” he said, and Link had no idea what he meant. 

Oh, his right hand. Rhett was taking it and rotating and…

“No,” said Link, looking at his hand. Not at Rhett. Definitely not at Rhett. “My hand’s fine. My arm’s screwed up.”

“You fell, didn’t you?” said Rhett. 

“What, you thought I was hiding under the bar?” Link asked. “How LOGICAL would that have been? If I was going to run, it’d have been AWAY.”

“So you tripped and fell.”

Link shrugged, still looking at his hand. “I think I was pushed. I don’t know by who, the guy I swung at’d already fallen I think. I hope I didn’t hurt him.”

“You knocked a guy down?”

“Maybe.” It was crystal clear in his mind, in pieces that didn’t quite come together. 

Rhett was still holding Link’s hand as if it was a corn dog he wasn’t quite sure was still good enough to eat.

Horrible image. HORRIBLE image. The things that went on his brain…

“I wish I knew what you were thinking, Charles.”

“You don’t want to know.”

Why did you have to be such an asshole at the bar? Why the hell did you let things escalate? Why did you think I wouldn’t have your back? How could you have thought that?

“I’m sorry,” Rhett said. “Whatever you’re pissed at me about, I’m sorry.”

Rhett dropped his hand and pressed his forehead against Link’s, so close he couldn’t see Link’s eyes, and Link let out a shaky breath.

“I hate it when you won’t talk to me,” said Rhett, whining, and joking, and genuinely hurt, all at once. “Why won’t you talk to me.” He paused. “Please talk to me.”

Link took another deep breath, and another. “Okay,” he said. 

Rhett circled behind him and helped him out of the light jacket he’d been wearing all day, then shoved Link toward the headboard. Link settled, swung his feet up, let Rhett unlace and take off his Merrills. 

Rhett joined him, inches away. “Comfy?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Okay, talk. Why are you so – shocky? It’s scaring me. I don’t want to deal with an ER here – I’d rather just turn around and drive home, if you’re really hurt. Unless you hit your head. Did you hit your head?”

“No, not badly at least.”

“Then talk.”

Link – couldn’t.

“What are you afraid of?”

And still, Link couldn’t speak.

“Okay, multiple choice,” said Rhett. “A, you’re just too mad at me to deal. Which I don’t understand, because the guy swang at me first, and anyway nobody really got hurt. B, there’s something really awful going on in your life that I’ve completely missed. Which is possible. Or, C, you’re existentially crisising and you forget to get me a ticket. Or, D is for done. Done, done, done.”

The list helped, tremendously. “Done with bar fights. Done with hitting and messing up my book.”

“Done with me?”

Link had no idea how to say what he needed to say… 

“Do you know what controls theory is?” he asked. 

“How to turn things on and off?”

“It’s about how everything is interrelated, in mechanical systems. You know I love this stuff, you know I’ve wanted to control everything since the day I was born and I WOULD except you come in and convince things to do your will?”

“Because I’m usually right!”

“Yeah, you usually are!” said Link, and now he felt on firmer ground. “But I haven’t kept hanging around with you all these years because of your smarts, or your great personality, or just out of habit. It’s the challenge of it, but at the end of the day you DO get it right. Even right now, you’re getting it right. And that helps me get it right. And that’s really, really important.”

“Okay…”

“I was pissed going into the bar this evening. Did you notice?”

“Kind of,” said Rhett. 

“I was pissed because you were tossing around logic like a sledge hammer. If A then B – when do we REALLY know A? When do we REALLY know B?”

“I don’t remember doing anything sledge-hammer-like…”

“SHUT UP,” said Link. “You wanted me to talk, I’m talking. I’m on the top of the rock.”

A reference to the favorite spot of their childhood; “I love that rock,” Rhett murmured.

“Okay, maybe you didn’t really say anything too outrageous,” said Link. “What got me pissed is – logic isn’t what’s important. I mean, it’s important not to think, ‘The bear ate my tunafish, therefor the bagel is green’ – I mean, you do need some understanding of cause and effect, but if you really want to control anything, you need to know so much – you need to know EVERYTHING – and you can’t. You can’t, I can’t, nobody can. Even for a closed mechanical system, there are entire textbooks about control theory. More than just my intro. People spend their lives studying it.”

Link sighed. “So you need to pay attention. That guy shouldn’t have taken a swing at you, but you weren’t picking up his body language at all, you’d found yourself an audience and you were going for it.”

“You think I need an audience?”

“Of course you need an audience. THAT’S not even up for debate.”

“I truly didn’t know I was pissing that guy off.”

“You truly should have.”

“Well, sorry.”

“I’m going to take that like you mean it,” said Link. “But that’s just thing one. Thing two is, okay, you didn’t read him. You don’t know him. But you know me. Why did you think I wouldn’t help you out in a fight? How could you possibly think that?”

“I don’t know,” said Rhett. “I guess I just didn’t know what you’d do. Maybe I didn’t want you getting drawn in, hoped you hadn’t, assumed you hadn’t.”

“That’s not correct,” said Link. “You were pissed as hell at me back there, at the bar, when you thought I hadn’t backed you up.”

“Okay, maybe I was.”

“What did you want me to have done?”

“Maybe kept me from getting in that fight in the first place?”

“It’s YOUR job to keep ME from doing stupid shit,” said Link. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Apparently not,” said Rhett. 

Rhett lifted Link’s right forearm from where it rested on the bed between them. “This still hurt?” he asked.

“Well, it HAD been feeling a little better.”

“Sorry,” said Rhett. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“And my book got hurt too.”

“Where is it?”

“In the car.”

“I’ll apologize to it in the morning.”

* * * THE END * * *


End file.
